Not terribly inventive stuff, even in 1983. But Ultima III pulled it off by cramming a lot of gameplay into a relatively small package - one reviewer called it "dense, almost rococo" and that pretty much sums it up. While the world itself was tiny by today's standards, it had lots of towns, dungeons, and castles to explore.

Notables: Ultima III was the first Ultima to allow the user to have a party of up to four members, and they could be of wildly varying races and classes. It was the first computer role-playing game to have a tacticalcombat model that actually felt more like a boardgame than a computer game, and went over quite well. Ultima III also pretty much defined the Ultima look and interface until it was completely revamped for Ultima VII. And it had a very unusual enemy in Exodus.

My Opinion: An excellent game at the time, Ultima III hasn't aged as well as it might have. No provision is made for ensuring that the player's party has a chance against monster parties; your group of four level twocharacters can easily find themselves pitted against eight fireball-hurling balrons. To add injury to injury, combat is automatically initiated when a monster party gets close enough, and you cannot run from combat once it started - all combats are to the death. This makes it very difficult to get a new party started in the game (but see the Notes section).

Notes: The original game was released for the Apple II (Richard's machine of choice back then) and then ported to a phenomenal number of other machines. Here's a complete list:

(Thanks to the Ultima Collector's Guide, http://www.ucg.f2s.com/ for much of this information)

More recently, Leon McNeill, a dedicated Ultima III fan and Macintosh user, recreated Ultima III as a superb Macintoshapplication. His version updates the graphics and interface of the game and has options you can turn on to make it easier. If you're interested in playing the game and have a Mac, I'd strongly suggest getting this version. You can find more information (including screenshots) at http://www.lairware.com/ultima3/ .

Ultima III was the first of the Ultima games to get a port to a console game system; it was ported to the original 8-bit Nintendo, where it was simply titled Ultima: Exodus. The Nintendo version was a fairly loyal port to the original game. The only real changes that were made were compensation for the lack of a keyboard. Since this was the last of the Ultima games that did not include keyword-based conversation with NPCs, the changes that were made were minimal.